Dr. Pepper Temporarily Ditches HFCS To Celebrate 125th Birthday

If you’re a real sugar fan and you spot a really old looking can of Dr. Pepper at your grocery store in the next few weeks, you might want to stock up. To celebrate its 125th anniversary, the soda brand is going retro with its can designs — and its sweetener.

Dr. Pepper “Made With Real Sugar” began rolling out in stores over the holiday weekend and should be available through early September. Though like many limited-run things, there’s always the chance it could disappear sooner.

Much like Pepsi’s recent — and highly successful — “throwback” versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew, you can spot the real sugar Dr. P by the cans and bottles with redesigned artwork and logos meant to recall the soda’s past. There are six different can designs in all.

Of course, those Dr. Pepper fans lucky enough to get their cola fix from the Dublin Dr Pepper bottler in Texas can always avail themselves of actual sugar taste.

So why are things like this 125th Anniversary Dr. Pepper, the Pepsi Throwbacks and Kosher Coke not available everywhere all the time?

The editor of Beverage Business Insights thinks the cola companies don’t really want to know that customers prefer sugar over HFCS:

In some ways their worst nightmare is that this thing sells through the roof, because then that’s telling them something about how consumers feel about their product.